Skip to main content

TICKED OFF BUT STILL TICKING

Submitted by Editor on

Broughton residents who visit, live or work in the City Centre have one day left to complete a very simple online questionnaire.

It aims to help establish priorities for the Centre Neighbourhood Partnership's Local Community Plan 2014–2017, and will close on 23 May. A map of the area appears below.

Participants are invited to rate presumably competing priorities in a list compiled after previous rounds of consultation. For example: Moving around the city centre; Walking for transport or leisure; People's health (including fitness and mental health); Local services for older people.

The complicated and essentially political task of balancing such demands on a limited budget is obviously impossible in such a superficial exercise. The results, some suggest, will be at best meaningless and at worst misleading.

Cynics say it looks like a box-ticking exercise designed by officials who need to be seen to have consulted before reaching their decisions by other means behind closed doors.

Fortunately, the questionnaire is not the only way opinions are being gathered. Officials are available to meet Broughton residents from 11am–4pm on Saturday 7 June at the Central Library (George IV Bridge). They will also attend a series of Business Forum focus groups

Sceptical and generally grumpy though we may be, Spurtle dislikes nothing more than apathy and despair so we counsel filling in the wretched form, attending one of the meetings, and seeking to fine-tune the draft document which will emerge in July/August prior to publication of a final version in September.

Happy ticking, huffing and puffing.

--------------------

Points taken on board. Priorities kept general at this stage - community events are crucial to get more depth to results. ^K